Enhancing the Technical Capability of Our Manufacturing Workplace

Systems and Status in FY2014

Globalization of Komatsu's production organization is progressing and the manufacturing workplace requires a high level of technical capability. We have designated the third Saturday of every October as “Technical Day” and hold all-Komatsu technical competitions on this day. Participants include employees from overseas subsidiaries and business associates, whose aim is to maintain and improve the Komatsu Group's technical capabilities by mutually dedicating themselves to their studies.
In addition, Komatsu established the Meister system for passing down technical capabilities from the production site in FY2006. Techniques and skills that merit handing down are divided into 9 fields of 15 capabilities, and a First Meister is certified for each capability.
Under Komatsu's Mother Plant System, production plants with product development capability are positioned as Mother plants, which are responsible for overseeing the safety, quality, cost and delivery of overseas Child plants that produce the same products. Meisters are certified for their high level of proficiency in specific technical areas and dedicate their time to guiding and nurturing engineers at plants in Japan as well as at overseas Child plants.
Komatsu is also enthusiastically conducting improvement activities. Every year on the third Saturday of November, we hold the all-Komatsu quality control competitions, and similar to the technical competitions, many people from overseas subsidiaries and business partners in the supply chain participate.

DATA

FY2012

FY2013

FY2014

All-Komatsu Technology Olympics

Number of participants

211

203

225

From overseas

50(10 countries)

49(11 countries)

50(11 countries)

All-Komatsu QC Competition

Number of teams

78

76

79

From overseas

25(13 countries)

21(11 countries)

23(12 countries)

23 (12 countries)

41

41

40

Services Personnel Human Resource Development

Building a Structure Centered on the Department for Promotion of Distributor HR Development

The services personnel, who support our customers with the operation of our products that they have purchased, play a very important role in Komatsu's “Quality and Reliability.” Komatsu puts a lot of effort into the human resource development of our distributor services personnel all over the world. We have two training programs for services personnel human resource development: internal human resource development for services support and distributor human resource development.
We have created an internal training program called “Product Support College” for training our Japanese staff, and the Komatsu Human Resource Development Center for training essential personnel who will be working at future mining sites, and conduct planned training within departments and at overseas sites by rotation.
Distributor human resource development, depending on the content, will be created or supported by the head office, and for the basic courses on products and services, Komatsu provides the curriculum and training materials and conducts the training on site (at the local company and distributors). We also provide advanced courses by inviting senior managers and mechanics to Japan to conduct the training, and technical training provided by the local company's training center (mother training center) for more specialized training. We track each type of training via the LMS (Learning Management System) to continue making sure that we can see and fortify the services personnel's human resource development.
For places that do not have a training system at the distributors, or if there is an urgent need for human resource development, Komatsu finds ways to efficiently develop human resources, such as by establishing a training center in Africa and working with local schools in Russia, Brazil and China to start a construction equipment training course.
To further strengthen our distributor human resource development, in April 2014 we created the Department for Promotion of Distributor HR Development at the Komatsu Head Office. We intend to continue developing our structure for providing long-term support to our distributors by clearly establishing our global development structure and performance appraisal standards in areas such as marketing, parts and services and by offering varied training systems and programs.

Training Centers around the World

Komatsu has 19 training centers in 17 countries. Centers on the map in orange boxes are Mother Training Centers, which handle specialized training including for distributers in other regions.